georgioz
10mo ago
Look at their politics calibration, it does not look nearly as well as sports one. It is also because of this:
When calculating the calibration and skill scores for forecasts that we updated over time, such as election forecasts that we updated every day, we weighted each update by the inverse of the number of updates issued. That way, we counted each forecasted event equally, regardless of how many updates we issued to the forecast.
Nevertheless at minimum stop spreading stupidity like "538 predicted 30% chance of Trump winning". They made 150+ predictions with wildly different number assigned. Having articles that "Today 538 predicts politician X winning with 90% probability" means nothing, in a week there may be a new prediction reassigning it to 50%. At best you may gauge who is favorite and who is not, but one does not have to be an expert for that.
georgioz
11mo ago
Don't worry, Western Marxism is still alive an doing well. Just wait until the oppressed take control of means of [cultural] production - then we will solve all the contradictions, including those that soviet style communists could not resolve.
georgioz
11mo ago
One of the counterarguments to this "hard on crime" line of thinking is the problem of mass incarceration. There is a limit to how many people can be imprisoned without compromising the system’s integrity. I learned more about this when I read about the Russian prison system, which developed its own set of rules after the communist revolution in 1917 and following literal imprisonment of whole nations in gulags. A similar phenomenon is happening in US prisons, where powerful gangs impose their own laws and influence both the inmates and the outsiders. Mass incarceration is a problem of the type that stares back if you stare at it intensely enough.
There is also a deeper problem behind this - whether we call it a “mental health crisis”, as some on the left do, or “social fabric being ripped apart”, as some on the right do. It is shocking that over 9% of males can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime. Even if we are not among them, we cannot ignore the fact that 10% of males will experience the prison system for a period of time. Therefore, I do not think that the solution is to release violent criminals or to be extra tough on crime.
Those who choose to have themselves put to death in such a fashion will, I presume, lack the creativity to come up with solutions to their problems, and/or the energy to solve them even if they knew how to.
This seems implausible to me since I would hope that going through approval process for euthanasia should be much more difficult and "energy" requiring process compared to any attempt at suicide. I think that the OP is correct and the biggest obstacle is just that those people are cowards and cannot bring themselves to do it. Apparently that Belgian woman even attempted suicide two times, with many people suggesting that this was scream for help.
I also kind of agree with OPs critique of oppressive progressive state which turns into dystopia in front of our eyes. Apparently compassion with homeless is to provide them with needles, drugs, tents and then picking up their feces or even their dead bodies after they literally shit themselves after some drug induced episode. All people should also offload all their responsibility and agency onto "experts", who can better calculate all the priorities like if you going out for a walk on the beach is not somehow dangerous activity. And if you still have some nagging feeling of being wronged, do not engage with anybody but immediately call your school administrator, HR representative or other designated moral authority certified by Twitter with blue checkmark. These are the only experts equipped to fully incorporate your grievance into the newest and definitely scientific psychohistorical model of how to make society effectively altruistic. And of course you have to accept the result, if you disagree it means you may have been infected with some version of wrongthink so you should follow the advice and go for sensitivity training therapy with certified psychologist. And if you still feel ignored, then you can always work with your assigned psychologist to utilize evidence based life affirming care specialized at ending your suffering with "dignity and compassion" in nearest medical facility.
I as European welcome this. Different example is that for instance to call something butter in EU, it has to have between 82 and 90% butterfat and maximum of 16% water. So what happens in practice is that you have brand name of your local diary producer with Butter name on it and you know what you get. If you see something else, then it is some fake product. I consider this as very valuable for the sake of informing the customer about the quality and content of the product.
georgioz
8mo ago
I can't imagine a more sympathetic to human realities to this concept, and am really baffled by the person who would put 'liberal fairness' on such a pedestal that they would get remotely worked up at the idea of supporting marriages / families, the fundamental social unit of society.
Oh, so then let's make it a society wide practice - if you get a job in local Amazon warehouse you are entitled to have your spouse or close family member employed as well. Let's make it a law. Yeah, I don't think so.
She absolutely did NOT mean it to refer to bystanders who did nothing, because she was not seeking to explain the behaviors of bystanders, but rather only the behavior of government officials who implemented the policy.
Sure, nobody is talking about doing nothing, we are talking about people supporting 3rd Reich in one way or another. Which is how this thread started.
They think that Arendt had some incredible insight because, in 1963, it was in fact a unique and controversial insight.
I am with you on this. People fetishize Nazism as somehow unique and Arendt kind of ruined the party, I am not dissing her - I am dissing people who need her.
It is the exact opposite of outrage porn; in fact, Arendt was criticized at the time for not being sufficiently outraged. Her entire thesis was that Eichmann was not "a monster" and was not even particularly anti-Semitic.
Here I did not mean Arendt's particular schtick, but how it is used now: Ah, you are not particularly hardcore Nazi, you are just banally evil so I can still punch you. I meant this.
If so, then they are not an example of the banality of evil. They are an example of regular old evil.
Doctors are only one cog in the machine that goes from lawmakers, through Eichmann style beurocrats interpreting said laws, through insurance companies, hospital management, through psychiatrists, receptionists and so forth. The surgeon who is cutting the organs in fact has quite a good excuse doing what he does, he has mountain of exculpatory paperwork to freely do what he is gonna do. In fact if the doctor would refuse in some fit of consciousness, he or she would probably suffer severe career consequences. How is he evil in the old sense? He is law abiding citizen, respected even.
I think he would not disagree. I ran Hlynka's text through Bing Chat and this was its summary regarding the humanities professor part:
The author is suggesting that GPT-4 and humanities professors have similar goals and methods, and that they are both inferior to thing-manipulators who can challenge their claims with facts and data. He is implying that GPT-4 could replace humanities professors because they are both producing meaningless or misleading content.
I asked about some counterarguments and here is what it came up with:
The author’s distinction between thing-manipulators and symbol-manipulators is too simplistic and ignores the diversity and complexity of both types of activities. Symbols are not just arbitrary or meaningless signs, but tools for communication, reasoning, and representation that can have various interpretations and functions. Symbols can also be manipulated in ways that reflect the properties and relationships of the things they represent, such as in mathematics or computer science. Thing-manipulators are not just concerned with facts and data, but also with creativity, intuition, and problem-solving. Thing-manipulation can also involve symbolic aspects, such as using models, diagrams, or equations to describe or analyze physical phenomena. Both thing-manipulators and symbol-manipulators can benefit from each other’s perspectives and methods, and collaborate to solve hard social problems that require both empirical and conceptual approaches123
I then asked it to tailor an argument in favor of humanities professors. It searched for "value of humanities professors" on google and incorporated it into the context:
Humanities professors are not just producing symbols and feelings that appeal to a certain audience, but engaging with the world in important ways. They are exploring the diversity and complexity of human cultures, values, and experiences, and contributing to the advancement of knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking. They are also addressing the ethical, social, and political challenges that face humanity in the present and the future, and fostering dialogue and understanding among different perspectives and communities. Humanities professors are not disconnected from reality, but rather enriching it with their insights and interpretations12
I then asked it if all those things cannot be also done by GPT-4. It then searched for "GPT-4 limitations and capabilities" and it came up with the following:
It is possible that GPT-4 can perform some of the tasks that humanities professors do, such as writing essays, generating quotes, or passing exams. However, GPT-4 is not a substitute for humanities professors, because it still has many limitations and challenges that prevent it from achieving the same level of understanding, creativity, and ethics as human scholars. For example, GPT-4 has difficulty with:
- Distinguishing between true and false statements, and between real and imagined scenarios1
- Reasoning, planning ahead, working memory, and backtracking, due to its autoregressive architecture2
- Avoiding social biases, hallucinations, and adversarial prompts that can affect its outputs3
- Handling visual input, which is not yet widely available or reliable4
Therefore, GPT-4 is not likely to replace humanities professors anytime soon, but rather complement their work or provide new opportunities for collaboration and innovation.
So in a way we came full circle, the last part is I think a version of original argument Hlynka made.
georgioz
1yr ago
If this was happening before Covid then I would agree. However post COVID I think this will not be such a problem. There are numbers of things that governments can do to decrease energy demand. They government offices, schools etc. can move into online mode again to save on heating, they can even motivate businesses to do the same. Governments can shutdown certain energy intensive industries temporarily like Aluminum production offering subsidies. They can close "nonessential" things like ski resorts - especially those which require energy intensive artificial snow.
Of course there will be considerable damage especially when it comes to competitiveness of manufacturing industry with certain countries that have energy independence. But if we lived through COVID we will get through this.
It is couple of months when through Spotify algorithm I encountered a song that I really liked for its lyrics. This was the song - don't worry, I will also publish youtube link later. I have to say that the lyrics grabbed me. Just some excerptions:
It was dark and I was supremely alone
No matter now if the compass fails again
Cause in your love I built a home
Refrain:
We're all we need, oh darling
Yeah, we're all we need, oh darling
Yeah, we're all we need, oh darling
Yeah, we're all we need
Yeah, we're all we need
You get the gist. When I listened to it on Spotify I said to myself how interesting it is to listen to popculture song that expresses woman's lovesong to a man, one does not see something like that anymore. I even said so to some of my friends/family. Only then I listened to youtube version of the song and it was about lesbian love
What I want to say is that "subverting the expectations" went right through over me. The cynical me did not even register it, to me it seems as if it all went through: this is what we had in the past and I can just pretend that this is man/woman love song and it has the same power. I ignore "the message" given the current circumstances and I can quite enjoy it. It is interesting how we went full circle when the current culture adopted old-timey tropes and they pretend to shock somebody. It is strange feeling, as if we are allies. Anyway that's all, I am interested in what you guys have to say to it.
I don't think this is an incendiary view, in fact it is a very conservative one. There are many researches for instance regarding polygamous vs monogamous societies and across various outcomes monogamous societies come ahead: crime rates, warmongering and so forth. Monogamous societies were in fact minority of civilizations and they to large extent limited male (and female) aggression and impulses by culture and religion. Men who have wife and children have more stake in the society and thus are less likely to cause trouble.
The problem with feminism is that they have it exactly backwards: instead of noticing how society tamed men, they see it all as some historic conflict between toxic men and oppressed women as a class. The solution was not to feminize men, it was to masculinize women as it is now ubiquitous with the new mean girlboss archetype. But I would not throw the blame on feminism, in fact it only falsely reinforces the idea of revolutionary social change by activists and movements. I think the larger part of "blame" lies at the feet of technology. The obvious one being the pill, which gave women possibility to replicate male sexual behavior without risk. But I think the more significant is servitization of economy, which gave women ability to compete with men on the same grounds.
The current calling out of toxic masculinity by feminists reminds me of current meetoo rape allegation trends. Sex positive feminists clamored for sexual liberation of women, they no longer have to be at home watched by their relatives. Break the shackles of bigoted religious sexual stigmas, go out and have sex any time with anybody you wish. Prostitutes are suddenly sex workers, porn is at leas normal acting if not outright art and so forth. However when suddenly sex became cheap and without any stigma some people - mostly men - "take advantage" of it. Now we need to somehow bring the clock back and create some elaborate system of consent and new sexual mores and culture to protect women from predators. If only there was something like that before, right?
georgioz
1yr ago
I think this is where the distinction of socialism/capitalism breaks, given that in the original Marxist literature socialism and ultimately communism was supposed as an ideal against the reality of "capitalism".
In practice basically all radical left regimes collapsed into some form of what is called "state capitalism" - basically bigshots with political power call the shots and various corporations do their bidding. Of course there is also an incest with different "czars" of different parts of economy or bureaucracy using their influence or even direct ownership for political power struggle. But the state and politics have primacy, if powers at be decide to run "anticorruption" raid against your corporation or they decide to cut the corporations out of financial markets or regulate it to oblivion that is their prerogative.
The key understanding is that radicals do not have a positive plan, they have revolutionary zeal and faith that it pays off in the end. If corporations "wokewash" their revolution, that only means that "true revolution was never tried" and repeat. Filthy reactionaries won again, but only temporarily. To evaluate radical leftism by an outcome like "capitalism strong vs communism enacted" means adopting their own irrational logic. To many people with experience in such a situation across the world it is clear that these ideologies are unworkable and that having a new crop of cynical power brokers like nomenklatura is inevitable. Corrupt Chinese multibilionaires tied to political clans such as those of Xi Jinping or Jiang Zemin are a feature and inevitable result of Maoist revolution, not a bug.
In that sense rich and powerful using the new radicalism to get ahead and get wealth or power is nothing new.
georgioz
1d ago
I think that you are correct but it is also a broader cultural change that is path dependent. The institution of marriage is unrecognizable to what it was in the past, shaming no longer works and family support is not there. Also in the past the situation was symmetric - being put together man who had quarrelsome wife who constantly created drama and conflict with neighbor was terrible for a man with no way out either. Even if he made all the money it is not as if he could just have a parallel life not supporting his family without massive reputational damage to the extent of destruction. Plus the wife also had family and brothers or uncles and so forth - deadbeat man could end up in a very sorry state if he overstepped his bounds and did not fulfil his family duties.
A similar phenomenon came to be after the advent of the pill. If a young men impregnated a young women, everybody knew that he was responsible to marry her shotgun wedding style. After invention of the pill and access to abortion, suddenly it was all on woman. Are you pregnant? Then it is your fault for not taking pill properly, but you can go and have abortion. You still want a baby? Okay, feel free to be a single mom while the man just leaves and does what he wants.
So yes, maybe women being "independent" and doing some clerical work for government with no husband and no kid is the next best thing in current reality where all the norms are obliterated. But it does not mean it is actually good for them or the society.
I am pro-Israeli here, but I can easily steelman this. Yes, what Hamas did was your cookie-cutter attempt at ethnic cleansing. You see, the way ethnic cleansing works is to do horrible shit to women, children and elderly and then proudly shout that from the rooftops. If you instill enough fear in the opposing ethnicity, they will vacate the premises on their own.
This is how it was done by Israelis themselves in 1948, they massacred the village of Deir Yassin and then run around literally broadcasting to rest of Arabs that they are next. By the way the extremist Israeli militia that participated in Deir Yassin massacre called Irgun was led by Menachim Begin, later a prime minister of Israel who called the massacre as "splendid act of conquest".
There are numerous other examples of successful ethnic cleansing. I can mentioned the Operation Storm during Balkan Wars in 1990s, where Croats ethnically cleansed Serbs from their territory with tacit approval of western coalition, the international tribunal even rubberstamped that it was actually not ethnic cleansing despite hundreds of thousands Serbs being effectively expelled. The formula was the same: run in, massacre anybody who refused to leave: mostly infirm, children, elderly etc. Then just enjoy wailing of their wives running before you, as they are just cheap but very authentic signal booster for those Serbs who did not get the message so far to run on the double. And now you have nice ethnically cleansed Croatia, part of EU and Eurozone, full of nice beaches and good food prepared by former soldiers that participated in the operation, with main perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing - general Ante Gotovina - considered as national hero.
Another successful ethnic cleansing is that of Germans after WW2, nobody now gives a shit about atrocities they experienced in East Prussia, currently Russian enclave or that they were expelled from Poland because Stalin literally moved Poland couple of hundreds kilometers to the west, which included German cities, or Czechoslovakia when Germans lived there for literally centuries. Nobody gives a shit about those Germans now, there is no wound on the soul of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles or Russians, this is the reality now and they will live happily ever after - until they themselves are ethnically cleansed sometimes in the future possibly.
As the last example I present the genocide of a tribe living on Catham Islands called Moriori. They had unique pacifist culture of nonviolence that was able to survive in isolation. That is until they got in contact with Māori people in 1835 - in paradox of history Māori themselves were the Moriori ancestors. Long story short, imagine slavery and genocide with the last descendand of the culture died in 1933, around 100 years after contact with Māori. Again, nobody gives a shit about Moriori, because there is now literally nobody to give a shit about, they are history complete with their unworkable pacifist culture. And Māori are now respected minority of New Zaeland complete with land rights recognition and all that.
And I think I will also close with another last example I ninjaedited here, that of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh as it is very pertinent to the topic at hand. This instance of ethnic cleansing was made possible because the main ally of Armenians - Russia - is unable to provide any assistance, but also because Azerbaijan now has a very good geopolitical situation as being key for non-Russian supply of energy to Europe, having good diplomatic ties to Turkey as their protector as well as being on the upswing economically. There are some performative declarations from the west, but nothing will be done on practical level.
So I guess my "steelman" is that this is the reality of human nature, this is how the world worked and will work in the future. If there is anything that needs any "steelamaning", it is this first principles morality and dream of multicultural peace loving society where the whole world is full of Moriori peoples singing kumbaya together. The reality is much more ugly and the fact is that ethnic cleansing was used and will be used in the future as solution of various conflicts. In a sense I think that the Hamas attack was a success to large extent, it shows that the support is shifting away from Israel. Europe is still dependent on energy from Arab countries, Germans recently signed 15 years long contract for LNG from Qatar, and guess who is one of the largest supporter of Hamas globally. Who knows, maybe in due time we will have the same situation as with Nagorno-Karabakh, which was also a long war until it wasn't.
The "analysis" does not really depend on that single "sentence" - although I also think calling it just as a sentence is uncharitable. It is not some random sentence from Sequences, The OP called is as a credo, it is oneliner that is tied to rationalism and Yudkowsky especially.
What I was getting at was the overall tone of some of the rationalist writing that I think "the credo" shows very well: it is edgy sounding guru oneliners that are sometimes literally used in normal conversation - the credo in particular I think was for instance said by Aella in her interview with Lex Fridman unironically.
I also admit that I am maybe too harsh, maybe I am taking it all too uncharitably. It is just internet infotainment, there is not that much going on and rationalists do have also oneliners like "it all adds up to normalcy". And then one reminds himself that normalcy includes saving ants, or AI apocalyptic doomerism and then I am not as sure what charitable take on rationalist utilitarianism should look like when taken as an actual moral philosophy that is adopted up by the unwashed masses.
Also as a closing point, I thought in this manner due to the fact that the OP described how normal people including Marxists do not adhere to the credo. I found it paradoxical as I do not find rationalists strictly adhering to the credo either, in that sense they do have much more in common with Marxists: they do have materialist utilitarian moral philosophical system (or one can almost dare say theology) build up ground up from first principles with some transhumanist transformative project. It is a philosophy created outside of mainstream, a system created by outsider "basement dwelling" philosopher with prolific writing and slight ties to rich donors. I wanted to point out this myopia to OP.
"Dangerous information exists" isn't incompatible with the idea that you should try to believe true things
The credo is much stronger than that, it puts the Truth as ultimate value, not as just something aspiring or something one "tries" to adhere to but abandons for something else in presence of "dangerous" information. The credo is not "that which can be destroyed by the truth should be unless it is dangerous to do so". Of course you can argue what you do, but then there is no need for edgy sounding guru lines like the credo. You would then just have ordinary thing like "try to tell the truth whenever you can" - it almost sounds something people like Peterson could say actually.
Nothing you said here is even remotely like belief in untruth. Trust authority figures? Also a means of determining the truth, because the whole reason you're trusting them is that you think they're right!
Of course it does. I can say that I believe New York Times or Eliezer Yudkowsky or The Pope or I can trust the Science. If you pick up bundle of beliefs some of them are for sure going to be untrue. This is a common way how people get to believe untrue things. And this is also the way rationalists pick up their beliefs, unlike some scientific sounding first principles reasoning. So again, there is not that much of a difference between rationalists and just regular informed people, in fact from what I noticed rationalists are putting too much faith into their own thought leaders.
That's just common sense!
Slow down, we are talking about rationalists, I am not that sure how far the appeal to common sense can carry you here. Again, I am maybe too harsh as most rationalists are just normal people who actually have some common sense, except that the whole rationalist ethos is about overcoming commonsensical reasoning on many things and there really are some people over there that can take these things maybe too literally. That's my whole point.
Seriously though, there's whole reams of decision theory stuff about how you shouldn't lie!
Except if it is dangerous to tell the truth, we already covered that, right?
georgioz
8mo ago
I do not have interest going into technicalities. Leveraging my position and asking my employer to hire somebody I fuck is nepotism, period end of story. Arguments involving softening the language by euphemisms like "spousal hiring", defending it on the grounds of values of family formation like somebody above or digging up these other examples like remote work are unnecessary sophistry.
If he tries to secure larger paycheck, then I see nothing wrong. If he tries to secure hot assistant that will give him a blowjob whenever he feels like it or he requires that university signs contract with his brother's firm for security services or that the university hires his nephew for new research vacancy - then yes, I think those concessions are wrong. I hope I will not have to go into the weeds of why I see it as wrong.
What is stopping me is overall morality and being judged by peers, sometimes even written ethical rules. But what amazes me is that simple renaming of a thing gets so far: it is not bad nepotism what we are doing, we are only doing "spousal hiring". Renaming things seems like a really powerful social technology of how to render written rules moot, and judging by reactions here it also works on people. Awesome.
georgioz
9mo ago
One thing I would add is that it is very hard to measure opportunity. How do you know two people have equal amount of it? You may coast on the idea for a few years or decades - we are equalizing opportunity, just wait for it. But after some time people will be tired of it, in the end increased opportunity should lead to increased outcomes in some way. Equality of outcomes is really the only way to measure equality of opportunity, I think people are falling into a trap even mentioning equality of opportunity. Because if the outcome will not improve, you will end up being the guy telling people that they had plenty of opportunity that they squandered, so they should stop complaining.
georgioz
1yr ago
You do not have to even recall the Kursk incident, you could do similarly well investigating sinking of the Moskva cruiser and Black Sea fleet flagship. There are some reports of very poor results from last maintenance report regarding the overall readiness of the cruiser. We are talking about basic things like only 10% of fire extinguishers being functional during the day of the sinking, not to even speak about faults with internal communication, problems with steering and power plant, problems with radars as well as certain anti-missile defence systems that were canibalized to maintain the other ones on the ship.
Even under the best circumstances the Russian military budget is insufficient to maintain one of the largest nuclear arsenals in conjunction with large navy in conjunction with large conscript army with aviation and all the rest. And Russia is far from ideal with huge amount of corruption, nepotism and plain incompetence getting in the way of this already challenging task of maintaining their forces. The result is what we see now.
georgioz
1yr ago
It seems like a noble sentiment on the surface, but it does not seem that great when you are hiding in the bushes while the enemies behead your brothers and rape your sisters and aunts. This high-minded morality to me is just a sign of privilege, it is easy to pretend to be "moral" if one is not present with tough choices
georgioz
1yr ago
I think we are talking about the same thing except that "physically killing themselves" is in a sense trivial matter of things like swallowing some pills, jumping off the cliff or pushing a trigger. Motorically killing oneself is triviality and almost everybody can do it in some manner comfortable with his "skillset". It of course is psychologically serious act and not everybody is capable of it - OP says that this is cowardice.
georgioz
2mo ago
Apocryphally the billionaire Bill Ackman who was recently also behind ousting of Claudine Gay from Harvard may have gotten redpilled by his own daughter who is apparently very into Western Marxism and overall Social Justice, at least according to what she - a History Teacher - follows on LinkedIn.
You smuggled in the argument that "sex is sacred" and therefore not at all like tennis. But then tennis people should just say it: sex absolutely is like tennis and it should be okay for children to have sex with adults was it not for all those pesky people who wrongly think that sex is sacred. But don't worry, as soon as we work a little bit on that opposition we will gladly accept child sex as new normal and embrace groomer as proud moniker.
Maybe the argument is that they will obviously not do that for political and strategic reasons. Something the NYT article gloats about: haha, we lied about gays being born that way to fool conservatives into accepting new laws. Now when we have majority and conservatives are eating dust, we can finally say what we wanted all along. And by the way trust us, the sexual liberation will definitely stop before full acceptance of Minor Attracted Persons (wink, wink hahaha).
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